A tortilla de harina, a handmade wheat tortilla topped with grilled meat, pickled vegetables, softened potato and beans, from Guatemalan street food stand Guate Vibes in Oakland.
Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
A trio of tostadas (chicken salad, avocado and beans) from Guate Vibes in Oakland.
Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
When Celeste Oliva came to the States at 16 years old, she left behind her favorite food: Guatemalan tortillas de harina, which refers to both the thick, chewy wheat tortilla and the dish it’s made with, smeared with mayo then topped with beans, pickled vegetables and meat. To Guatemalans like Oliva — who is from the coastal city of Livingston, and of Garifuna ancestry, an Afro-Indigenous people living in the Caribbean and Central America — tortillas de harina are a weekly tradition, made at home or enjoyed streetside. In Oakland, she found that most iterations of the dish used “compradas,” store-bought flour tortillas. Oliva, who has been making them since the age of eight, is uncompromising in her belief that Guatemalan-style flour tortillas must always be handmade.
Now 24, she hand-stretches them four nights a week at Guate Vibes, a food stand that she started in September, in between another job and attending college full-time. Located next to Castillo Appliances on International Boulevard, you can watch her stretch dough into tortillas about the size of a 16-inch Corolla rim. It is, perhaps, the Bay Area’s only spot offering the coastal Guatemalan cuisine, and it’s only available on the streets of deep east Oakland.
I’ve encountered Guatemalan tortillas de harina at “La Walgreens,” the street food corridor in Fruitvale, but those use compradas, and they’re made in the style of Guatemala’s central areas, where the dish is rolled, like an open-ended burrito. Oliva’s tortillas de harina are served open-faced, in the Departamento de Izabal tradition. Visitors, she said, come from as far as Stockton, Santa Cruz and Sacramento. Like me, they probably came across her stand on TikTok, where videos of her stretching tortillas have garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
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The tortilla de harina is Oliva’s best-seller. The tortilla is supple, slightly elastic and faintly sweet — more similar in thickness and chew to a Honduran tortilla (used for baleadas), than ones used for Mexican burritos. The hub cap-sized tortilla functions as the serving platter for the mixta option, which includes a hearty mix of grilled steak, a slab of spiced pork, silken black beans, softened potato, pickled veggies and marinated cabbage. It lends itself to sharing, preferably someone that likes eating with their hands; eat it however you want, but the recommended method is using the tortilla as a utensil.
Garnaches, fried corn cakes topped with beef and marinated cabbage, from Guate Vibes in Oakland.
Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
Oliva’s menu includes churrascos — fixed plates centered around grilled meat — and a trio of thinly carpeted tostadas: one with black bean puree, another with mashed avocado and a third with chicken salad. On occasions, Oliva makes tapado, a Garifuna soup that’s typical in Livingston, made of blue crab, plantains and coconut milk. Should you only have space for one dish outside of tortilla de harina, make it the garnachas: extra crunchy dollar-coin-size fried corn rounds, fully loaded with heavily seasoned ground beef, mild tomato sauce and marinated cabbage. While it’s standard Guatemala fare, most stands in Oakland don’t offer it, as they’re fryer-less.
Currently, Guate Vibes operates in the evenings, from Thursday to Sunday. Oliva has considered the next steps for the business, like a food truck and a restaurant, but she’s cautious about expanding while attending school.
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According to Oliva, when she first started vending on this stretch of International Boulevard, the area only had one other stand. Since February, she has seen several: fruit stands, taquerias, and dessert stands, two of which flank Guate Vibes. One is a crepe business run by her sister, the other a churro stand in front of the appliance store. Operated by Castillo Appliances, the stand makes churros on the spot; a worker dumps pre-mixed powder and warm water into a stand mixer, then loads the mixture into the extruder, before pushing out a coil of dough directly into scalding oil. The satisfaction of the crunchy treat is somehow deepened by the scene of guys loading washing machines into pick-up trucks.
Guate Vibes. 9327 International Blvd., Oakland. instagram.com/guatevibess